I'm Liking This Taper Thing

So, my long run this past weekend was 10 miles, and that felt mostly really good. I ran about 4.5 miles today, and I felt pretty strong. I was able to run faster than I have in a while, which was nice. I'll run a couple more times this week, but both of those will probably be shorter runs between 3 and 4 miles. After the mammoth 3.5-hour 20-mile run, these short 25 to 40 minute outings go by pretty quickly.

I am feeling nervous about the marathon, but confident that I'll be able to get through it. I'm not sure yet if I'll decide that this is something I'll want to do again. I used to think people who ran this far were a bit nuts, and even at the start of this effort this marathon was only meant to be a one-time thing for me. Now that I've spent all this time training, I can see how people train for and run one marathon after another. Even the lengthy training hours really bring a feeling of accomplishment. I am amazed myself that I can run 20 miles.

Our friend Jim has run 30 marathons, and is hoping to eventually complete one in each state. We are trying to talk him into a marathon on the West Coast because we'd like to see him and Linda, and we'd like to meet Regan. Perhaps we can convince him to make the trek by entering another race ourselves. Yes, that includes Mark, since I think he should try this out once too. Although, if Mark and I both run a marathon, I'd be waving goodbye to him at the start line and he'd probably be taking a nice celebratory nap by the time I rolled across the finish line.